Hartwick college

“Language and Space”
A talk by Jean-Paul Orgeron
Lecturer in Philosophy Hartwick College
Sponsored by the Cognitive Science Program and Phi Sigma Tau, the Hartwick Philosophy Honor Society
Friday, November 21st
Eaton Lounge, 4 p.m.

Language is a complex human activity. Claims about language acquisition necessarily involve our examining two crucial theoretical positions in cognitive science: (i) that the mind is composed of genetically specific, independent modules; and (ii) that the mind, when presented with complexity, makes adequate use of general learning mechanisms. We will briefly consider the impact of a widely influential view held by the linguist Noam Chomsky. In particular, Chomsky maintains that children acquire language by possessing a predisposed set of language-learning capacities. These capacities involve a dedicated Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and the existence of a set of innate linguistic principles – Universal Grammar – deployed by the LAD. This view commits Chomsky to (i). This talk, rather, will concern (ii). I will attempt to mobilize several recent papers in cognitive and developmental psychology that would have us question the foundations for Chomsky’s view and for proponents of modularity in general. Language acquisition, I will argue, is motivated by attention – a general learning mechanism based in the mind’s ability to represent space.